Tightening the Screws

Attribution: Chad Davis, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

By Geoff Carter

I like to think of myself (perhaps generously) as something of a handyman. I’ve made a few repairs around the house. I’ve fixed leaky faucets, running toilets, and squeaky doors I’ve changed storm windows, tuned up our lawnmower, and preformed other sundry houselhold tasks. 

A few months ago, I took apart our vacuum cleaner to see if I could find out why it wasn’t working and found a short circuit and fixed it. It all went well until I overtightened the screw when reassembling it, causing the plastic housing to crack. I should have known better. I don’t know how many times I’ve overtightened screws. I’ve stripped them, broken them, and even cracked their wood or plastic housings. You think I’d learn. 

The Trump Administration is learning this lesson, too—and learning it the hard way. After turning the screws on the American people too far in Los Angeles, Chicago, Portland, and now Minneapolis, they’ve found the foundation of their racist and xenophobic ideology is cracking. It’s breaking, and they’re the ones who broke it. They’ve pushed the American people too far—and screwed themselves in the process. 

Trump and his sadistic minions Christian Nazi Steven Miller and puppy killer Kristi Noem decided to flood these cities with roving bands of untrained, heavily armed, and intensely aggressive ICE agents. These enforcers were not certified law enforcement officers. They were—are—thugs who have illegally broken into citizens’ homes, arrested innocent immigrants without cause or warrants, broken car windows and cut seatbelts before dragging suspects from their cars. 

These “officers” are members of dozens of masked, non-uniformed brute squads designed to frighten and intimidate local populations, but like overtightened screws, they have split the wood. While trying to break the foundation of our democracy, they have only succeeded in cracking their own facades.

American citizens, recognizing the unjustness and illegality of ICE’s onslaughts, have fought back. They have organized protests, neighborhood defense and Eyes on ICE groups. They have taken it upon themselves to record assaults, withstood the use of chemical weapons, harassment, and even recorded public executions on their phones. 

In their zeal to install their perverted racist Christian nationalist ideology, the Trump administration has overreached itself—and it might have been a good thing they did. Had the strategy to undermine personal freedoms by undermining the Constitution been more stealthy, thoughtful, and deliberate, it might have taken the American people longer to recognize their intentions. While the press, which has been warning us for years about Project 2025—the blueprint for Christian nationalist takeover of our government and culture—the American people never seemed to take the threat all that seriously—not until they came under direct and hostile attack by agents of the government.

In their efforts to legitimize the violence, President Trump has frequently stated ICE has been targeting “the worst of the worst” for deportations, averring that pedophiles, rapists, gang members, and worse have been streaming across the border. Nothing could be further from the truth. According to a Cato Institute report, “only 11% of all ICE book-ins in fiscal year 2025 had been convicted of either violent or property crimes.” Nope. The president and his administration aren’t really concerned about crime. They’re more concerned about ethnic cleansing. 

According to a report by the ACLU,  part of the Project 2025 plan concerning immigration will “target immigrant communities through mass deportations and raids, end birthright citizenship, separate families, and dismantle the asylum system.” This part of this solution was co-written by Tom Homan and advised by Steven Miller. Russel Vought, one of Trump’s key aides, also played an integral role in masterminding this plan to target, arrest, and imprison certain segments of our population without due process and without mercy. This is hardly a surprise. Christian nationalism is deeply rooted in racism and white elitism. 

During the first weeks of his second term, Trump hit the gas, implementing key elements of Project 2025 like using DOGE to dismantle government agencies, targeting DEI and gender diversity, reproductive rights, and accelerating its devastatingly brutal deportation program.

But Trump—and his loyalist toadies—went too far too fast. He gave the screw a few turns too many. We were appalled when DOGE took over Social Security, when USAID was destroyed, when thousands of federal employees were fired, and when the East Wing of one of our most revered institutions, was suddenly and rudely destroyed. When agents of ICE descended upon Los Angeles and then Chicago, arresting and detaining citizens without due cause (let alone warrants) kidnapping parents dropping off kids, and terrorizing children, the American people got angry. Yes, all this was appalling and almost unbelievable, but nothing prepared us for the brutal murders of two innocent citizens by masked federal agents. That was it.

Then, when Renee Nicole Good, a peaceful demonstrator exercising her constitutional rights was shot down in cold blood, millions of viewers saw video footage taken from every possible angle. They saw an ICE agent fire at point-blank range into the open window of her car. They saw the shooter and his masked colleagues first deny a first responder access to the victim and then leave the scene of the crime—surely not how trained law enforcement professionals are trained to react to a crime.

Despite slanderous claims from NSA Secretary Kristi Noem and the president that Renee Good was a domestic terrorist, claims (a coverup) which made the crime seem even more horrific, people reacted in anger. When Minnesota law enforcement agencies were excluded from the federal investigation and barred from viewing the crime scene, Noem’s clumsy attempts to cover up the crime seemed obvious. Hundreds of thousands of protestors turned out nationwide, sometimes in sub-zero weather, to protest the gross injustice and monumental arrogance of the administration. The administration had gone too far.

About a week later, when Alex Pretti, another peaceful protestor, was beaten and executed on a Minneapolis street in broad daylight, the nation erupted. Hundreds of No ICE demonstrations sprang up everywhere from New York City to Green Bay, Wisconsin, Newnan, Georgia, to Belton, Texas. Republicans and Democrats, red states and blue states, men and women, adults and children all rose up say enough is enough. 

Mr. Pretti had previously participated in Milwaukee’s Riverwest 24 Bike Race. In a gesture of solidarity and hope, hundreds of locations across the country—including Riverwest—staged bike races in honor of Mr. Pretti. Both Renee Good and Alex Prettiwere good people, working people. Alex was an ICU nurse at the VA. Renee was a mother of three. Both felt a deep sense of civic duty, deep enough to take them out to the cold streets of Minneapolis where they were brutally murdered by the regime against which they were protesting.

We were lucky in the sense that Mr. Trump has no sense of history and very little sense of strategy—except when it comes to grifting or marketing. If he had the shrewdness or patience of a Joseph Stalin, a Rasputin, or even an Adolf Hitler, he might have been able to sneak some parts of the oppressive dictums of Project 2025 by us. He did so at the beginning, when we were too shocked to really believe what was happening. DOGE was unreal. The firings were insane, but we started to learn how to live with them.

But when Trump let ICE loose, all bets were off. He turned those screws on the American a few too many times. We rose up. We are still rising up and now the administration is retreating. Kristi Noem has suddenly relented from a previous position an said ICE agents will have body cams. Administration officials have backed off his aspersions of Good and Pretti. 

But Trump hasn’t seemed to learn anything from this. He never has and probably never will. Some dark force buried deep down in the abyss of his warped soul will compel him to keep turning the screws. He won’t stop, and we can’t either. He’s cracked the foundation of this country, but not the soul of its people. His poll numbers, dropping steadily for the past few months, have recently hit rock bottom. So, what is he doing? He sent the FBI down to Georgia to confiscate the 2020 election records and has spoken about the GOP “nationalizing” our elections. 

This is yet another turn of the screw. Well, we’ll see who does the screwing come election time.

Notes

1. https://www.cato.org/commentary/trump-says-ice-arresting-worst-worst-new-data-shows-thats-not-true
2. https://www.themarshallproject.org/2024/10/21/fact-check-12000-trump-statements-immigrants
3. https://afscmeatwork.org/system/files/wfse_project_2025_summary.pdf
4. https://www.aclu.org/project-2025-explained
5. https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-project-2025-maga-b2742240.html#